This isn’t just a conspiracy to prevent users leaving (although there is an element of that); there are very good reasons that deleting your social media profiles is hard work. Let’s look at why that is and how, if you want to, you can finally delete them for good.

Social Networks are Social

One of the biggest reasons that social networks are hard to delete is that handling it actually presents a technical challenge to the developers. While you might think that your data is limited to your account, with a service like Facebook that simply isn’t the case. Your data is entangled with ever other user you interact with.

There is no good way for Facebook or Twitter to handle these situations. Every solution in some way breaks the service for other users. The best scenario for them is, that if you want to leave the service, you just stop logging in. That way nothing gets broken.

There’s also a chance that an inactive user will once again become an active user. I know that I’ll regularly abandon Twitter for weeks or months before logging back in and using the service every day. I reckon there are plenty of other people like me.

Having users leave a service also looks bad. If the press started to report that tens of thousands of users were deleting their accounts every day it could tank Facebook’s stock. Instead, leaving them as inactive or deactivated accounts doesn’t sound any where near as bad.

How to Actually Delete Your Social Media Accounts

As I’ve mentioned, deleting your social media accounts is awkward. You normally have to jump through a few hoops to do it. The companies don’t want you, in an angry moment, to decide you’re done with Facebook and be able to quickly delete your account. They want to put as many barriers in the way as possible so that you’re more likely to reconsider or only deactivate your account.

Twitter, for example, won’t delete your data for 30 days. You can log back in and reactivate your “deleted” account at any point in that time period.

The first thing to do is decide whether or not you want to delete your account. Not logging in or deactivating it will have much the same effect while allowing you to come back later. You might not like Facebook that much but it is still a handy place for keeping in contact with your high school friends. If, later down the line, you want to reach out to an old friend it’s much easier if you can just log back in to an old Facebook account rather than starting a new one just to track them down.

If you do want to it, the best way is to use a site like JustDeleteMe which has walkthroughs and links for how to delete your account at most major web services. They also rank how easy it is to delete each account so you can get an idea of how much effort it’s going to take.

It’s important to note that in many cases the data won’t vanish instantly. It will take time for it to be removed from the social networks and in some cases, like Facebook messages, it may never be deleted as it’s actually attached to someone else’s account.

Closing Out

While it would be lovely just to hit a button and wipe your Facebook account, in reality that just isn’t possible. Social networks are just too complex to easily allow for someone to remove their data. They also don’t want you to leave so it’s in their interests to make it even more awkward.

If you are planning to delete your accounts, you have to accept that you’ll be made wait, submit requests, and otherwise deal with minor road blocks. Sites like JustDeleteMe are there to help you through that trying time.